The Politics of Buying a Watch

Dear Watch Snob,

Love the column, but I am, admittedly, a very novice watch enthusiast and wondered where the WS would side with my question.

I have fallen for the Seiko SKX173, and I have read earlier your acceptance for Seiko. Yet, as a Filipino, I feel as though I might be "selling out" my family (and Filipinos everywhere) if I buy it. So my question is as follows: Is there a historical context that prevents you from getting a watch that has caught your eye, or is that just nonsense?

Well, I suppose that all depends on how long a memory you have for past animosities and possible present injustices, about which I am thankfully not equipped to remark (I am a — no, the — Watch Snob, not an ethicist, thank heavens).

It is perfectly true that Japan treated the Philippines with incredible oppressive brutality. It is also true that if you go back far enough in the history of any nation-state, you will find horrendous miscarriages of justice and abuses of power that will make you weep for the irredeemable evil of mankind (and in virtually all cases, you don't have to go back very much further than, say, last week).

I personally prefer to judge watches and their makers on their current merits or lack thereof rather than dwell on the horrors of the past. Otherwise one is in the position of irrationally holding the sons (and daughters) accountable for the sins of the fathers (and mothers). But in this situation I am going to forego attempts at satire — the past you reference is too bloody and recent for irreverence — and suggest instead in all sincerity that this is a matter in which you must consult your own feelings and conscience. The atrocities of belligerents in the second World War are still a living memory for some, and if for some reason a Japanese watch will remind you too much of them, don't buy one. Or buy one, and wear it as a salutary daily reminder of and warning against, the terrible danger in thinking in absolutes. If you do that, you will have that rarest of horological treasures: a watch worth what you paid for it.

Collecting Historically Important Watches

I want to base my watch collection on pieces that are both horologically acceptable AND have a place in world history. I have just bought an Omega Speedmaster Pro 3570.50 but now what?

What watches have “earned” the right to be noteworthy. Not just because they were in some movie or made by company X, no matter how respectable, but because of its inherent qualities have somehow contributed to history itself. Any ideas?

Again, you people, with the Speedmaster. I'm starting to wish I'd never expressed a positive opinion on it. (Although, do enjoy yours; I don't mean to be a spoilsport.)

Okay, look here, sir. Watches have been around for 500 years. They have accompanied mariners, submariners, aviators, cosmonauts and astronauts, mountaineers, spelunkers, and Arctic and Antarctic explorers. They have been on the wrists of statesmen, generals, surgeons, scientists, artists and poets, cinema idols, and on and on.

There's no possible brief answer to your question, and you would find little use in any real answer I could give you anyhow as it would either have to be so specific as to leave out whole swaths of watchmaking or so general as to be a cultural history of the watch itself.

I understand the desire to have a watch with a bit of interesting history to it as much as the next fellow, but collecting, say, boxed marine chronometers (among the most, if not the most, historically significant of all timepieces) is both impractical for many and virtually certain to be unsatisfying for most of today's lovers of watchmaking. Beyond a certain point, a watch has a desirable aura thanks to its accompanying you in an interesting life, not because it accompanied someone else on theirs.

Hit the next page to find out why the Snob wants you to embrace the tacky...